Check Out These Excerpts from Massad Ayoob’s New Book

In Combat Shooting with Massad Ayoob, America’s best-known combat pistol shooter shares stories and insights from his decades of experience. If your skill with a gun is the only thing standing between you and death, you’ll be glad you read this book.

I started this book with the section on mindset, because that’s where it all begins with the practitioner and therefore, is the core of the matter. Next comes a structured guide to learning combat shooting, because that’s where the practitioner gains the ability to weave together the necessary elements of this multidimensional discipline. In the middle of the book we analyze the experience of three gunfighters who all “faced the elephant” more than once. It’s striking how much they have in common, and on how many levels. Next is an introduction to the competitive element of combat shooting, and a rationale for why – though it’s not complete training in and of itself – competition can be an extremely useful component of training, skill maintenance, and skill assessment. Finally, we close with some of the choices the serious combat handgunner has to make if they’re going to get the most out of the whole endeavor.

From Chapter 5: Choices:

Choosing the GunThe gun? In the military it will be issued to you, and in police service or security work it might be picked for you, and that’s that. If the gun you’re likely to be fighting with is, say, an issue Beretta 9mm, that’s the gun to be both training and competing with, to best hard wire your abilities to reflexively use that weapon when your life is on the line. (And you’ve got a fine gun to do it with, anyway. I’ve seen champions like Ernest Langdon and David Olhasso win major titles shooting the Beretta 92 against everything else out there in IDPA, and have seen the Beretta in the hands of military aces like Marine Gunnery Sergeant Brian Zins win the Distinguished and the President’s Hundred against the most finely tuned 1911s at Camp Perry. I won the next-to-last PPC match I shot, a Police Service Pistol event, with a 92G.)

You can live with the “company gun,” but wish it was more finely tuned to better win a match with it? Consider buying your own “match version.” I know lots of cops who carry a Glock 22 on the street, but use a longer barrel Glock 35 for IPSC Production Class competition. In the police revolver days, it was common for officers to carry a four-inch service revolver on the street, and maybe use it in Service competition… to get a six-inch version for Distinguished matches…and perhaps to have a custom gun made up on the same frame and action with a heavy Douglas or Apex six-inch bull barrel and a sophisticated BoMar or Aristocrat sight rib for open class competition.

Each modification – lighter trigger, heavier barrel, sights – changes the match gun a little bit more from the street gun. The individual shooter has to balance his or her particular needs or goals. If a slightly lighter trigger, longer sight radius, or sights more suitable for ranges than dark alleys give that particular shooter a better score…and winning the match is more important than perfect replication of the street gun’s handling and shooting characteristics…the battery of “similar but not the same” guns may make huge sense.

But if you’re shooting competition purely to improve your skills with your home defense gun or carry gun and could care less about winning a prize, shooting with the exact same gun you’re likely to be carrying “on that day” makes the most sense of all.Only you can make the “which gun” choice.

Choosing the Ammunition
If caliber isn’t chosen for you, pick for your needs: the person giving you advice may have found the best choice for him, but not necessarily for you. The four-inch-barrel Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum was the gun the great Elmer Keith carried until the end of his days: he had helped develop it, over a lifetime of hunting big game, working cattle, and living outdoors with large things to shoot. Ross Seyfried, the second American world champion of the combat pistol, won the title with a Pachmayr Custom Colt .45 auto, but carried a Model 29 .44 Mag identical to Keith’s when working a cattle ranch, and for some of his career as a big game hunting guide, for exactly the same reasons. When I hunted big game in Africa, I carried a four-inch S&W .44 Magnum, because in that time and place, my needs were much like theirs. As an old guy who spends less time outdoors than I once did, that gun no longer suits my needs, and the .44 Magnum is certainly not the best choice for your elderly grandmother with osteoporosis. Choice is based on individual need and individual capability.

Once you’ve decided on revolver or auto, chosen all metal or polymer construction, picked the platform and the brand and the caliber, it’s time to choose the ammunition. There again, you want to make the choices for the right reasons. There’s a lot of myth on this topic that’s spread as fact. We’re talking here about defensive ammo, not competition ammo.

Chapter 1: Mindset (Because that’s where it all begins.)Chapter 2: Learning Combat Shooting (To help you weave together the various disciplines necessary to shoot well under pressure.)Chapter 3: Three Gunfighters (Wyatt Earp, Colonel Charles Askins and Jim Cirillo – and the lessons we can learn from each.)Chapter 4: Competition as Training (and a rationale for why competitive shooting is a useful component of training, skill maintenance and skill assessment.)Chapter 5: Choices (that the serious combat handgunner must make.)

About Corrina Peterson

Corrina Peterson manages book acquisitions and production at Gun Digest Books, the leading publisher of books covering everything there is to know about guns, ammo and knives. Corrina's interest in firearms began as the result of a close relationship with an M16 during active duty military service and went on to include trap shooting, upland bird hunting and wilderness elk hunting.